Question: Guru, In The Morning Prayer...

Question: Guru, in the morning prayer that we are supposed to say every day, the second half says, "When I see my Master's God-smiling eyes, my God-realisation-hope blooms..." Because I have no conception of God-realisation, I can't really relate to the second half of that mantra.

Sri Chinmoy: In the spiritual life we do not need to have a conception of things. We have not seen God, but we are taught from the very beginning by our soul and by our parents that God exists. We know that God is all Kindness and Affection, that God embodies all the divine qualities. God and God-realisation are part and parcel of one another. They are like the flower and its fragrance. If God is the fragrance, then God-realisation is the flower, and vice versa. If you say that you have no idea of God-realisation, then I will say, "You have no idea of God either, so how can you think of God and love God; how can you pray and meditate?" But you can and do love God; you can and do pray and meditate, even though right now God remains for you only a vague idea.

Before we learn a subject, we have no idea what the subject is all about. In fact, that is the reason we study it. In the case of God-realisation, we study the subject through our prayer, meditation and other disciplines. It is the most difficult subject, but whoever is praying and meditating sincerely, or even insincerely, is studying the God-realisation subject. To get the fruits of our outer study, let us say a Master's degree, it takes many years. Step by step we proceed from kindergarten to university. In the spiritual life also, we start with prayer and meditation. Then we dive within and advance to contemplation and, finally, one day we complete our journey. Again, when we complete our inner journey, to our wide surprise we see that we are just at the beginning of a new journey! In the spiritual life, everything is a totally new beginning. It is like discovering a most beautiful garden. We feel that there cannot be any garden more beautiful. But God says, "No, there is a garden infinitely more beautiful."

Before God-realisation, we can have only the vaguest conception of who and what God is. It is only after we become God-realised that God becomes an absolutely living reality for us. At that time, the Universal Consciousness becomes ours; consciously we become part and parcel of it. What is happening anywhere in the universe we can know if we want to. Also, there are thousands of things a God-realised person does every day that an ordinary human being cannot do. Before God-realisation, I used to do perhaps five or six things per day. Now there is not a single day in which I do not do thousands of things in the inner world. It is the same for all the spiritual Masters who have realised God. God-realised Masters can do all these things because they do not use their mind. With our mind we can do only one thing at a time. The mind can work very fast; it can accomplish one, two, three things very quickly. But the mind cannot do two things at the same time, whereas the God-realised soul can do many, many things simultaneously.

God-realisation is oneness with God's Will. Before we enter into the spiritual life, God's Will is not our concern; we are doing whatever we want to do. But once we enter into the spiritual life, at every moment we try to know what God's Will is. When we start practising spirituality, God does not come and stand in front of us and tell us what He wants. But always there is somebody inside us who is telling us the right thing and prompting us to do the right thing, and that is God. During our prayers and meditations, our soul or the Supreme tells us inwardly what should be done. If we do it, then we walk towards light; but if we do not listen, then we walk in darkness.

If the seeker is fortunate, God also sends His representative to tell His Will, and this representative happens to be the spiritual Master. The disciple may say, "If God Himself were standing in front of me, perhaps He would give some other Message." Or the disciple may think, "This Master is not pleasing me; he is not fulfilling my desire. Perhaps God Himself is not hearing my prayer or does not even know what my desire is." In so many ways the disciple can fool himself by separating God from his Master and convincing himself that God is somewhere else. But if the disciple is spiritually mature, he will feel that God and the Master know what his desires are and, if they do not fulfil his desires, it is because God does not want them to be fulfilled.

If the disciple's aspiration descends and inwardly or outwardly he starts doing wrong things, the disciple may think, "Oh, the Master does not know what I am doing." The Master does know; only he does not speak. If the Master sees that the disciple is always doing the wrong thing, that he is always walking in darkness, then eventually he becomes the silent witness; in silence he witnesses everything. It is just like our human parents. Our parents tell us to do the right thing. But when time and again we do not listen to them, finally they keep quiet and just observe.